Wednesday, August 23, 2017

The Fifolet

The fifolet (fee-foh-lay) is rarely encountered in Louisiana. It refers to what people elsewhere call swamp gas or will-o'-the-wisp. Typically, it is seen as a eerie light blue or white light. There are a number of local legends about fifolets. One common legend is that Jean Lafitte, the notorious pirate, had buried chests in the swamp here and there. With each deposited chest, the pirates shot one of the diggers and buried him along with it. The superstitious purpose for doing that was so the slain pirate would guard the booty from intrusion in the future.

Seeing a fifolet is something to wonder about. Some react by fear; not wanting to run afoul of the alleged pirate spirit that lingers around the supposed burial site. But there are the daring, greedy others. And there are some who just like to see what it's all about.

Marie and Etienne were a pair of teens out having a private moment with each other in a car on a back road in a swamp when they saw a fifolet in the distance. Marie, having gotten curious, said, "Let's go and take a closer look." She left the car and started walking toward the swamp gas blue-and-white light.

Etienne followed, looking for an adventure and wondering about the pirates' gold. Etienne and Marie followed the moving light until it stopped above a slight rise in the swamp. They brazenly approached the spot, and started to dig with their hands. The marshy soil was quite easy to dig in at first.

They had dug only a foot or so when they hit what was apparently the top of a wooden chest. However, the earth began to take on a quicksand mushiness. And Etienne was sucked into the sand and had a hard time with it.

Marie got out and screamed! Etienne had further difficulty and through his struggles seemed to get deeper in the quicksand. Marie said, "Etienne, pray with me. It's our only hope!" So they did. Whoo-eee! A real scare!

Finally, Etienne was able to struggle out of the sand.

A week after their scare, they returned to the same place. They saw no quicksand nor a hole. 

Years later Marie and Etienne married others. And neither told family or friends about their scary misadventure together. They might ask too many questions. 




9 comments:

Bilbo said...

Cue the weird organ music ...

Blogoratti said...

That's very interesting to note thanks for sharing. Greetings.

John A Hill said...

Very interesting.
Any personal sightings of this phenomena?

Mike said...

Saturday night fun, swamp gas and a match.

Cloudia said...

Spooky! There are flaming balls that fly at night in Hawaii (Aku Lele) that a Kahuna could send for a purpose. Also will o the wisps like yours, who are mischievous beings that mess with people in the upland jungle by leading them astray. I actually was awakened by many of them one middle of the night. [we lived in the jungle on the side of the mountain] I saw lights on the ceiling and thought it was a crowd of people with flashlights outside up to no good. As I awakened I realized they were not physical beings and they left. For real.

Duckbutt said...

That is a nice fanciful story about marsh lights.

Anonymous said...

Nice story.

Gorilla Bananas said...

The moral of the story being don't mess around with a fifolet, even though it sounds like the name of the poodle.

Linda Kay said...

My grandmother would say "curiosity killed the cat." Thanks for the story.